Getting the Heroes We Deserve

A fight broke out between members of the Denver Nuggets and the New York Knicks the other night, and it was predictably ugly. And just a week earlier, Tank Johnson of the Chicago Bears was in a late-night saloon situation that wound up with his pal dead by gunshot. Not from Tank’s gun, although he has had problems in that area before.

And on and on it goes. Athletes behave as if they are above the law, and debates rage about what it all means.

The debate veers between the side that thinks the players are overgrown, overpaid jerks who should get what’s coming to them, and the crowd that believes that one must make allowances for young men whose entire lives revolve around being physical.

Neither position is particularly helpful.

Is this the norm, and do we just know more about pro athletes and their lives because they are under much more intense scrutiny than in years past? Or is the sports and celebrity culture creating people who need to be ever more outrageous?

Or what?

Fans regularly vent their spleen on radio shows and letters to the papers. Nobody seems to be in favor of thuggishness.

But if it’s suggested to the fans that they flex the only muscle they have — the wallet muscle — and stop going to games, stop subscribing to cable TV packages, stop gambling, stop reading the sports pages and watching ESPN, what’s the result?

Apathy, at best. Nobody turns off the TV, or declines to renew their season tickets.

Much is made of athletes being role models for kids, and even more of those players who fall short, sometimes spectacularly, of the ideal.

Is it fair to ask these athletes to be role models for children?

Wrong question. What should be asked is this: Why should a ballplayer have to be a role model? Why do parents allow their kids to idolize these very fallible people?

In the course of my duties at the newspaper I cover a lot of miles on our scenic highways. Every day I witness acts of unbeliveably stupid, aggressive driving. Passing on double yellows, tailgating, the old "halogen hell" trick when a pickup or SUV with eight bazillion lights plants itself right on my tail at night, hoping to force me to pull over and let it zoom by.

Speeding is rampant, despite the fact that the major north-south and east-west roads — routes 7 and 44 —are also Main Street, and thus full of children, dogs, driveways, contractor’s vans, bicycles and old ladies coming out to check the mail.

And the aggression doesn’t stop there. I’ve observed otherwise ordinary-looking people abusing grocery store clerks, swearing loudly and often in public, and generally behaving as though they weren’t brought up in a barn, because no respectable barn would have them.

Been to a pro game lately? Never mind the players — have you taken a good look at your fellow fans? And listened to them?

Planning to expose your family to this?

Everybody knows what I’m talking about here.

I’m not worried about the athletes and their effect on us; they are us.

And with every ugly, pointless incident I see in my daily, ordinary life, or mirrored in the high-profile world of big-time sports, I get closer to the idea that we are simply getting the heroes we deserve.